


Pity The Poor Civilians

by Langerhan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, Disabled Character, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, London, Pining, Polari, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25504774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Langerhan/pseuds/Langerhan
Summary: Two agents from opposing sides meet somewhere in the middle. Neither of them want to see the world go down in flames.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs, IK Shenanigans





	Pity The Poor Civilians

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gray_Days](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Days/gifts).



Ice crackles at the edges of the lake that was previously a canal. The ducks are hungry and eager, prepared to fight for whatever is offered to them. In a few short decades the park will heave with tourists no matter what the season, but this winter there are only civil servants and their chilled acquaintances. 

Sitting a foot away from him is an echo of a man Fell once knew and doesn't dare to look at. He listens instead. 

“Hastur – well, you know what Hastur's like.” 

Fell does. He's read the files. Written a few of them himself. Crowley won't say it out loud, though. He won't call Hastur cruel or a murderer. The last time Fell tried, Crowley laughed, shrugged, and didn't speak to him for almost a year. These are the things that can't be part of their conversations.

He makes a noise of assent instead. 

“And you're sure?” 

Of course Crowley's sure. He called Fell on an unsecure line, telling him to meet, telling him – 

“Of course I'm sure. I delivered it. Handed it over.” 

“An American diplomat,” Fell says, disgust curdling in his throat. 

“He doesn't know. Ignore him, he's not important. He's just a pawn,” Crowley says. _Like you_ , he doesn't add, because at least sometimes, he knows what's good for him. 

“We will win.”

“Angel,” Crowley says, soft and cold as the snow that's just starting to fall, “do you really think anyone will win this one?” 

“I'm sure the Crown will be victorious over her enemies. The British people will triumph.” 

“And what about all the people in other countries? What about the violin maker you met up with in Odessa? Or that playwright in Leningrad, angel, the one with the radio? Is she an _enemy of the Crown_?” 

Angel repeated; Crowley's Grecian vice, long rumoured but never publicly confirmed, out on display for all the ducks to hear. A long time ago Fell had asked, as discreetly as it was possible for a gentleman to ask, if Crowley was being blackmailed. If being caught importuning at a cottage somewhere was why he'd turned traitor, then they could come to some arrangement – but Crowley had just laughed, loud and bitter, and opened another bottle of port. 

“War always has casualties,” Fell says stiffly. 

His leg is stiff. His joints are stiff. He wants to hold onto Crowley as they walk up the stairs and past the Foreign Office, fearful of icy patches and of being seen falling. He's not a young man by any stretch of the imagination; he should be sensible and get a cane instead. Maybe he can talk to the chaps at head office about making it something useful if he's ever allowed into the field again after that mishap with the French. 

“We have to work together,” Crowley's saying. “It's the end of the world.” 

He walks a few feet ahead of Fell and talks as though he's talking to himself. 

Soho isn't somewhere Fell would choose to come of his own volition. Even if the rozzers steer clear, a Polaroid of him entering this particular picture-house will be enough for him to lose his security clearance and his pension. (If he's spotted going in _with Crowley_ – something worse. Something unthinkable.) 

“Rizzi, bona to vada ya ripper,” Crowley says to the young man at the ticket counter, and it's not fair that languages are so easy for him, not fair that he can make the delicate-featured boy smirk and giggle with just a wink and a few words, “dooey, me and the omi palone behind.” 

Fell has a few florins and half a crown in his pocket and he starts to dig them out after Crowley slips behind the curtain. The boy shakes his head: “Don't be naff, yer mate gave us the gelt.” So that's alright then, he supposes. 

Crowley picked well. The place, once they're through the beaded fabric looking glass, is empty, flickering images of men getting much closer than any two men have any right to be lighting up blank seats and sticky aisles. Fell lights a cigarette and huffs out a pale grey cloud of smoke and breath. The heating must be on the fritz again. 

“You going to sit down?” 

Crowley's turned to look at him. He has his arms stretched across the back of the chairs and he's sitting in the middle row as though he's never heard of being discreet (or, for that matter, discrete). The devil in the garden, Fell's very own personal temptation, is a beautiful man with beatnik hair and no sense of self-preservation, whispering that Fell should come on over. 

He sits. 

Crowley and the screen are equally dangerous to watch. Instead Fell looks at the cigarette in his hand. The red glow isn't enough to light or heat anything beyond itself and the smoke curling from it, which is just fine. Crowley's lit up by the screen already (not that Fell's looking. He's definitely not looking). 

Goodness knows where Crowley's pulled that bottle of wine from. His satchel, hopefully. 

“You know it's – it's everything, right? Not just a game anymore.” 

Fell takes the bottle when Crowley passes it over. It feels like something they would've done at school; sharing a cheap (not so cheap, he realises, reading the vintage and the variety) drink and talking about Judgement Day, back when the closest they got to it was reading Wilfred Owen out loud. 

The screen blurs with sudden exhaustion. 

“It was never a game for some of us.” 

“You know what'll happen, don't you? _Duck and cover_ , the Yanks say – it's bullshit, we can't duck that. Something like that in the middle of London, everyone's gone. Everything blown away.” 

“Gone,” Fell repeats quietly. “All creatures great and small.” 

He's reminded suddenly of his neighbour's pets – two cats and a tortoise. If everything's gone, he wonders how long they'll survive in the confusing new world. He thinks about what he saw when – no, he doesn't, it was decades ago. It's fine where it is. The man on screen is stroking the other man's chest and his skin is staying exactly where it should be. They're kissing. The man who was – no, not that. There's no point thinking about that. 

The red dot in his hand is trembling, he realises. He'd smoked a pipe back then. 

“It won't just be them,” Crowley continues, “because nobody's going to stop, are they? They're not going to say oh right, you killed a million of our citizens, fair play, you chaps win. Although hey! I hear your lot have got a little lead box you can go sit in and listen to dopey musicals until the rations run out. Your boss loves them.” 

Fell grimaces. He can feel himself doing it. “I don't like it any more than you do, but I can hardly get into bed with an enemy of the state. That's you, by the way.” 

“Yeah, no, I got that,” says Crowley, and takes another swig when Fell hands the bottle back. “But what about if you heard the mean old reds were planning something? You'd have to do something then, right?” 

“I suppose I could – ask for clearance to...” 

Crowley sways slightly in his seat. “You're meant to be defending the state. The plans are already with the ambassador. Trust me, nothing more defensive than this.”

“Actually, my role's more strategic these days,” Fell starts before Crowley interrupts. 

“I'm going to be there influencing the staff and trying to move the project along in our direction. It would be a shame if one of the queen's men was also there, thwarting me at every turn.” 

Fell takes another drag of his cigarette. This is going to be a whole pack sort of day, he thinks. The smoke distorts the screen for a few seconds before dissipating. 

“If you put it that way,” he says slowly, “they couldn't actually object.” 

“Object? They'll want to put another shiny bit of tin on your chest.” 

Fell puts his cigarette out on the chair ashtray and reaches his hand across the seat to Crowley without looking. For a moment, he's left suspended in the dark void. Then he feels the pressure of Crowley's warm fingers against his. (It's been so very long since anyone shook his hand. Maybe literal years since someone held it.) 

“It might actually work.” 

“We do it right, nobody wins,” Crowley mumbles, “but nobody loses, either.” 

“We can save everyone,” Fell says. A familiar sort of warmth which makes him want to spark his lighter over and over again is welling up in his chest. “Work together for the good of the people.” 

Crowley chuckles lowly. “Knew you had it in you.” 

He squeezes Fell's hand once before letting it go. The cold of the picture-house feels colder at his fingertips than it did before. He doesn't watch Crowley stand and stretch; doesn't watch him leave; doesn't watch the screen. He thinks about lighting another cigarette. 

A poorly-dressed East End lad with an aquiline nose and a bruise across his cheek stumbles in, almost getting caught up in the heavy fabric of the curtain. Fell turns and watches him instead of anything else. He stumbles when he gets to the middle aisle. He sits close enough that Fell can feel the drunken heat radiating off him, he murmurs something indecently forward and perhaps, just this once, it's allowed.

**Author's Note:**

> Well done to [Gray](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867133/chapters/60161221) who has finished some very important writing which _isn't_ about pirates. Although their writing about pirates continues to be fantastic.


End file.
